Within moments the rogue message was retweeted more than 7,500 times and favorited more than 2,000 times before Sky News deleted it.

Sky then issued the following statement, declaring its Twitter had been hacked:

But it turns out… the so-called “hack” was actually just an actual “hack” – a goof named Colin who works for Sky News and accidentally posted publicly a tweet that was meant to be a “disaster response” test message.

Sky followed up with another statement:

It seems at least Sky News had a sense of humor about the whole mix-up, even creating a parody account of newly-Twitter-famous Colin:

The lesson here? Triple check before tweeting anything, especially if it’s potentially controversial or meant to be private.